Before becoming secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Wansley Walters directed the Miami-Dade County Juvenile Services Department, considered a national model for saving money while reducing the juvenile arrest rate. She’s the first woman to lead DJJ.

The ethics case against Jimmy Flynt was filed by Bunnell City Commissioner Elbert Tucker when Flynt was still a commissioner, in late 2010. Flynt admitted to three violations of law and now looks forward to possibly running for the commission again.

Paul Miller, 65, of Flagler Beach, posted $300,000 bond on Tuesday after spending 10 weeks in jail on a second degree murder charge following the killing of Dana Mulhall as the two argued over Miller’s barking dogs on March 14.

In a victory for Frank Meeker, the city will pay job “recruiters” $1,000 for being instrumental in expanding or relocating out-of-county business to Palm Coast, but many of the defining criteria remain vague and fraught with what the city terms unintended consequences.

Palm Coast resident Julia Roberts was admitted at Florida Hospital Flagler on May 4. On May 22, in her hospital room, she was married to Terry Adolph after hospital staff took care of vritually all the arrangements.

When it comes to talking about the troops who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, hero is the most overused word, while those who have sent them to Iraq and Afghanistan let themselves off the hook, argues Mary Jo Melone.

An appeals court today ruled that a 70-year prison sentence for Shimeek Gridine of Jacksonville, for an armed robbery and attempted murder committed when he was 14, doesn’t amount to lidfe in prison, but the 1st District Court of Appeal asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Angel Roman, a 28-year-old Palm Coast resident, has been in and out of jail for the past two years and suffers from several mental illnesses, people who know him told deputies. He’d been Baker Acted before his latest jailing.

A split Palm Coast City Council has been wrestling with a proposal to allow small home-based commercial bakery operations, as long as the bakeries don’t sell products from the home. Food safety has been a hang-up.

Flagler County rescuers were asked to scour the beaches and the surf late Monday after a 19-year-old man was believed to have drowned in Daytona Beach late Monday afternoon. Flagler rescuers were called out because of the force of the current, which could have dragged the victim quite far north.

A 3-year-old bulldog attacks and bloodies her elderly owners, who are forced to lock themselves in their bedroom; a gun and its hollow-point ammunition is stolen from a car on Osprey Lane and mysteriously returned a few hours later. A car burglar leaves Altoids for a calling card. And more from the streets of Palm Coast and Flagler.

The elderly are simultaneously the country’s most powerful single demographic and its least respected. But if the elderly don’t want to be infantilized, if they don’t want to be referred to as the elderly, it may be time to means-test the term and the literal benefits it entails.

With debate and votes taking place around the state and polls showing a growing acceptance, the issue of same-sex marriage and domestic partner rights will likely be among a host of second tier issues that could determine which presidential candidate takes Florida.

Be cautious, but Beryl is no bear, and it may prove to have more benefits than drawbacks despite dampening Memorial Day plans and grills, at least for Flagler County, which may see heavy rain but may also be spared the rougher edges of the storm.

Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, which builds affordable homes in new Orleans’s deva In many cases, the private sector can move faster and better than government agencies. In my opinion, that is the record of Brad Pitt’s vision and action in New Orleans.

Donald McCullough is the celebrated choral director and composer of the Holocaust Cantata, and for over a decade the director of the the Master Chorale of Washington at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Florida Sen. Paula Dockery has had her adventures–and misadventures–on Facebook and Twitter. “For those of you who haven’t joined the world of social media,” she writes, “you are missing out on being connected in this less personal but oddly more personal world.”

The 2012 Spotlight on Flagler Youth Entertainers of the Year in the junior division were Amanda Lee Pikowski, Eric Dangerfield and Kali Nina Cobb. Adam Prior and Felicity Furtado took 2nd and 3rd in the senior division of a talent show that raised about $800 for the Carver Center.

NOAA predicts a 70 percent chance of nine to 15 named storms, four to eight of them strengthening to a hurricane (with top winds of 74 mph or higher) and of those one to three will become major hurricanes. Be prepared.

Out of 988 students who took the test in Flagler County, 130, or 13 percent, scored only a 1 on a scale of 5, and will be held back, absent improvements in summer reading school, which the district offers free.

A regular partisan election in line with the coming primary and general will be held for Milissa Holland’s now-open seat on the Flagler County Commission, with two candidates already vying for it. The Palm Coast City Council may appoint a replacement for Meeker come November, depending on a legal reading of the city charter.

This Memorial Day Weekend, Audubon is reminding Floridians to take care with Florida’s original “beach babies,” rare and declining species of waterbirds that nest on Florida’s beaches and mangrove islands.

As the Florida Department of Education tries to handle the fallout of the collapse in FCAT writing scores, the office of Gov. Rick Scott has been intimately involved in efforts to roll out the test scores, according to staff emails.

Steven Paskewich was apparently upset that Trey Corbett, a candidate for Flagler County Supervisor of Elections, allegedly cut him off at the weight machine at Thriv, the Palm Coast fitness center–a machine Corbett says he doesn’t use. So Paskewich defaced three Corbett signs with mild obscenities–and was arrested.

Freddie Felder of Hastings in St. Johns County climbed through the bedroom window of a 15-year-old girl and raped her in 2010. He’d served three stints in prison previously, and was a previously registered sex offender.